John Luther Adams - Dark Waves

     "Dark Waves" is Adams' first foray into blending clean orchestral tones with electronically processed sounds. The composition is based on a pure fifth; it sounds frozen and gloomy, like an endless winter night. Woodwinds, on the contrary, give it a perky character. Their rapid quintuplets and sextuples resemble the joyful chirping of birds on the eve of spring. A special "off-season" atmosphere of the composition arises due to the gradual layering of diverse fifth motifs and harmonies. If there were melodic development in the music, one could call "Dark Waves" a dark version of Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun". However, slow and heavy "dark waves" absorb the echoes of bliss and languor, characteristic of the work of the French impressionist.

     Adams' approach is powerful, non-subjective, non-ethical, non-dialogue. He does not create the sculpture that we are looking at, but the space in which we are; it is so much larger than us, it is so much above us, above us, beyond our understanding, looking at, analyzing, our personal dramas, that the only thing left for us is to worship these gigantic objects, these super-volumes, these spaces, worship pantheistically, as something the absolute in its unknowability. Try to catch their structure, their transitions, their fluctuations, their life - very, by the way, different from our life.

     According to the composer, the compositions of three artists - William Turner, James Turrell and Mark Rothko - became the visual prototype of "Dark Waves". Despite the different artistic styles of the three authors (romantic landscape, conceptual sculptural installation, abstract expressionism), Adams was so impressed by the subtle ability of each to work with play of colors and chiaroscuro that he decided to try to create something similar in music. The fragility of the boundaries of sections and harmonic ambiguity brought it closer to the desired effect. Despite the significant qualitative and quantitative difference between the instrumental compositions of the two versions, they are united by the similarity of spatio-temporal characteristics. Using maritime terminology, we can say that a nine-point storm is replacing a complete calm, followed by serenity and calm again.